Terminal City (2 page)

“Now let me see the girl.”

“Take a deep breath, Alex.” Hal waved a licorice sucking candy under my nose. I opened my mouth and accepted it like a Communion wafer, even though it was small protection against the powerful odor of death.

I walked behind Hal, careful to avoid the areas of thick beige carpeting that were stained a dark red. The heavy silk drapes, rose-colored with a rich brocade trim, were drawn shut. Lamps on the dresser and night tables were lighted, and Hal’s auxiliary spotlight equipment was directed at the unmade king bed. I skirted the chaise and sofa, then saw the body of the young woman, sprawled on her back on top of the rumpled sheets.

My eyes arrested on her neck. Her head was turned to the side, away from me, but there was a slice deep into her flesh that extended from behind her ear down to the top of her throat and then across her slim neck till it disappeared out of my line of sight. Beneath the far side of her head the blood had pooled and seeped into the bedding. The killer had deposited drops—large globs of the thick dark stain—as he walked away from his victim. Those were the markings on the carpet that led out of this death chamber toward the front door.

“Had anything like this, Alex?”

Rocco had given me time to take in the scene. The well-toned body of the woman was exposed to all of us, memorialized in photographs that would be studied in a courtroom if I overcame an adversary’s cry of prejudice, and soon to be dissected by a first-rate medical examiner in the grimmest room in New York City.

My first instinct—anything but prosecutorial—was to restore some of her dignity and lift the sheet over her torso. Instead, I bit my lip and studied the position of the lower body—legs splayed to reveal a patch of dark, curly pubic hair.

“No,” I said. “Nothing.”

The lieutenant wanted to know whether I had encountered any victims who had survived a similar assault—raped and left for dead with a deep knife wound to the neck. Rocco Correlli would not have received reports of survivors from the Special Victims Unit, but my team would have known of anyone operating with a similar modus operandi.

I folded my arms and stared at the body again, from the tips of her manicured toes to the lines that appeared to have been sliced by a sharp instrument into her upper thighs, past the gaping wound that killed her, to the top of her matted brunette hair. “I’m sure you’ve checked with North.”

Rocco’s superb team of homicide detectives covered the southern half of the island of Manhattan, responding to all the unnatural deaths that occurred from the lower border of Central Park on 59th Street to the tip of the Battery. Manhattan North had the rest of the real estate—the park itself, the Upper East and Upper West Sides, Harlem and Spanish Harlem, to the border created by Spuyten Duyvil Creek, looking across to the Bronx. It was Detective Mike Chapman’s turf, run by a veteran lieutenant named Ray Peterson, with whom I’d worked dozens of cases.

“Nada. It’s like a monster that emerged from the deep and decided to commit a very professional job of slaughtering a broad smack in the middle of town, at one of the most prestigious addresses in Manhattan. No priors like it, nothing to suggest escalating from a pattern of serial rapes. It’s like he came out of nowhere.”

“Nobody comes out of nowhere, boss,” Pug said.

“And disappeared back into nowhere,” Rocco said, ignoring Pug McBride.

“Who is she?” I said.

“No ID yet. You’ve asked me that three times. Impatience isn’t your best feature.”

“How about the suite? Who’s it registered to?”

“Nobody. That’s the thing. It’s been empty for four days. Housekeeper came in around five
P.M.
to ready it for an arrival tomorrow.”

“You thinking inside job? Hotel employee?”

“Start there. Management made an effort to shut down the place—well, slow it down anyway—as soon as the 911 call went in.”

“How is it possible to function if they do that? How many rooms have they got?”

“One thousand five hundred and seven, including these suites in the Towers.”

The Waldorf Astoria occupied an entire square block, with a grand entrance fronting on Park Avenue, and rear doors—several of them—facing Lexington. Over time it had been home to Cole Porter, Bugsy Siegel, Marilyn Monroe, and General Douglas MacArthur. Its large ballroom was nightly the site of black-tie dinners for every New York City charity, national political fund-raiser, and rubber-chicken corporate event.

“So it’s impossible to close the place off, Loo.”

“They’ve been extremely cooperative. The night manager has called in all his supervisory staff, and they’re trying to account for everyone’s whereabouts the last three days. The entire employee list is online, so we’ll be doing background checks throughout the night.”

“How long has she been dead?”

It wouldn’t matter how intently I stared at the body. I couldn’t help the woman, nor did I have Rocco’s expertise in estimating things like time of death.

“I’m thinking day and a half, maybe more.”

“No medical examiner?”

“Johnny Mayes. I thought he’d beat you here.”

“Mercer caught me on my way home. I wasn’t far from the hotel.” The District Attorney’s Office was in Lower Manhattan, just north of City Hall. My apartment was in a high-rise only twenty blocks north of the Waldorf. Most days I drove downtown to work, parking on the street, with the laminated plaque that identified me as a prosecutor. I was only five minutes from the hotel when Mercer reached me at 7:20 this evening. “I’ll wait for him.”

Mayes was one of the best forensic pathologists in the country. I learned something every time he examined a body, explaining the damage each weapon had caused or the kind of force necessary to result in death. It was extremely comfortable to work with him, to know the deceased was in his capable hands, to witness how he teased so much information from a silent, often reluctant corpse.

“Take your last look, Alex.” The lieutenant was fidgety, anxious to get me out of the way.

“The marks on her thighs, you make anything of them?”

“Leave it to the doc. They seem sort of superficial to me.”

“I get that. I mean the cuts, you think they form any kind of design?”

“Hal made photos,” Rocco said, taking his gloved hands out of his pockets to lean in, his head directly over the girl’s flat abdomen, peering down at her scarred legs. “Two parallel lines, kind of even, inch and a half long. With short strips going crosswise, like the rungs of a ladder.”

“I mean they’re really even. They look so deliberately drawn.”

“Carved, not drawn. You’ve seen that before?”

“I told you no, Rocco. I’m just thinking that here comes this killer who gets into the hotel, maybe he encounters his victim here—in the hallway or even the bar—entirely by chance.”

The Bull and Bear was a fixture in the New York scene, regularly crowded with businessmen and lawyers, conventioneers and tourists, highbrows and hookers.

“Maybe she works here,” Pug said.

“They’re scoping that out. There are thousands of staffers here. Must be ten at the front desk alone,” Rocco said. The check-in area was so large it took up half the length of the lobby. “You got housekeeping, kitchen and room service, engineering, reservations, maintenance, security, administration, a beauty parlor, a barber shop, a jewelry store that sells diamonds as big as the Ritz. Who’d even miss one girl?”

“I tell you what,” Pug said, with a sideways glance at the bed. “That particular one I’d be missing.”

“What I was saying is that somehow the killer gets in. Like he just walks in off the street. He meets the girl, Rocco.”

“Or he comes in off Park Avenue with her,” Pug said, interrupting again.

“That should show on the surveillance tapes. But it’s a crime of impulse, don’t you think?”

“Why’s that?” Rocco said, pointing the way back to the living room.

“Because he didn’t stop to take a room, did he? He never checked in.”

“Nope. But how would he have known this suite was empty?”

“Easy to get that information if he works here,” I said. “Or maybe he just got lucky trying doors. Could be he’s a scam artist, burglarizing rooms with a master key card. My point is that if this was a rape—an impulsive act—and the girl resisted, the perp might have gone berserk and slit her throat to shut her up.”

I turned back to look at the body again, but Rocco made it clear he wanted me out. “If you’re waiting for her to wake up, Alex, you’re out of luck. Move on, now.”

“But what doesn’t fit with that kind of crime of opportunity are the marks he etched on her thighs,” I said. “Too neat. Way too carefully drawn.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Alex,” Pug said.

“I’m just saying it’s odd. The fatal wounds are inconsistent with the careful markings on her thighs. Disorganized killer versus very meticulous artist.”

“Maybe he did the legs first,” Rocco said. “Maybe he tortured her.”

You couldn’t look at the young woman’s body and not think torture.

I crossed the threshold into the living room. Rocco directed me through the door and across the hallway, into another suite that management had given him to use as a mini command center. Several uniformed cops nodded at me when I entered. Before too long it would be swarming with detectives from the local precinct and Major Case.

“Want some coffee?” Rocco said.

“Sure.”

He poured us each a cup, then proceeded to tell me what his men would spend the night doing.

“Have you put out a photo of her yet?”

“No way, Alex. Her clothes are gone, there’s no form of ID around, and I can’t release a picture until Johnny Mayes cleans her up.”

“Are they doing a vertical search of the hotel?”

“Waiting on Commissioner Scully to give me a platoon of guys to do that. There must be thirty elevator banks, staircases everywhere, and all those thousands of doors to knock on.”

“It’s Pug’s case?”

Rocco Correlli took a sip of the hot coffee, scowling as he put it to his lips. “Scully wants someone with more polish as the front man. Pug’s too likely to step on his own dick when the first reporter goes after some off-the-record lead. Mercer’s on loan till we come up with a better idea.”

“That makes it easy for me.” Mercer and I had partnered more times than I could count.

“The word ‘easy’ isn’t in the mix, Alex. I’ve got to put a face and name to the body, quell the public hysteria about a murder in a Midtown landmark, and figure out who this madman is and where he came from.”

“Not to mention where he went.” I thought of the images of the two ladderlike designs on the victim’s long legs. “And who’s at risk going forward.”

“I’ve got less than a week to deliver.”

“Scully understands what a massive job this will be. It will take that long to study the hotel’s surveillance tapes, top to bottom of the building. He can’t be serious about a deadline.”

Rocco Correlli rested his mug on the silver tray the manager had sent to the room. “It has nothing to do with the commissioner, Alex. In less than a week, three floors of suites in the Waldorf Towers will be filled to capacity. The president of the United States will take up residence here for an emergency special session at the United Nations.”

TWO

“Maybe the White House ought to find POTUS another place to stay,” I said, refilling my cup with strong black coffee and sitting back on a yellow flocked love seat, flanked by a pair of cops in deep-blue uniforms.

“Every president since Herbert Hoover has been put up at the Waldorf Towers. The whole entourage. Secret Service and NYPD make the run from here to the UN like clockwork, and they’ve got every inch of this place figured out,” Rocco said. “Besides, Scully’s dep checked with all the major hotels in the zone. Mid-August? Every tourist and convention has a lock on all the acceptable places in town.”

“But you won’t even be done processing this one, will you?”

“Crime Scene was here by five thirty tonight. Did a thorough job on the two rooms but—”

“Find anything?”

“It’s a hotel suite, Alex. You know how many frigging fingerprint overlays they got? Hundreds of ’em. Not a clean lift in the place. Not even a partial in blood. Nothing on the porcelain surfaces in the bathroom. It all suggests a total pro.” Rocco put his coffee down and started for the door. “Forget your impulsive rapist.”

“Don’t blow me off like that.” There were detectives and supervisors who welcomed the insights of my senior colleagues, men and women who had worked the toughest cases shoulder to shoulder with their NYPD counterparts for many years. Rocco wanted to pick my brain about the sex crimes aspect of this case, but he didn’t care for guidance in his hunt for a murderer.

“You interrupted me,” he said sharply. “What did the guys find in the room, you want to know? No prints of value. Some trace evidence to be analyzed, probably from the maid service or a recent guest. Blood on the bed and on the floor—most likely the killer had spatter on his clothes. Didn’t stop here to wash up, though. Got away somehow, and may have left with the deceased’s belongings, too. Cool character. Maybe two of them.”

“Crime Scene must have a ton more work in the building,” I said, leaning forward.

“Second team was pulled in from the Bronx. The hotel is like an anthill full of cops. You know how many people—guests, visitors, employees, deliverymen—have pressed elevator buttons for the forty-fifth floor in the last two days? They’re dusting and scraping and looking for specks of blood, but it’s crazy, Alex. Give me a perv who likes to do his business in a small walk-up or a tiny boutique hotel or even a flophouse on the Bowery.”

“Not so many flophouses left down there, Loo.”

“Yeah, well, this killer could have targeted the Surrey or the Carlyle, some fancy digs farther uptown in Manhattan North. He had to do this on my watch?”

“Peterson doesn’t need another headache,” I said.

The city’s last high-profile homicide had taken place in Central Park, almost two months earlier, in June. It left me shattered for several weeks and resulted in Mike Chapman being suspended without pay for twenty-one days. He’d been burned by the embarrassment of his punishment for a personal transgression, then added a month of vacation to the rip imposed by the department to visit family in Ireland.